


Something in the way she moooves

by Blake



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Cows, Everyone Is Gay, Everyone is an American Girl, F/F, Miscommunication, Pining, Romance, So many cow jokes, Softball, Strangers to Lovers, University of California Davis, college angst, except Shawn, hashtagfemmeproblems, there's a whole biphobia subplot I didn't expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-08 01:34:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16419917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake
Summary: Harry is a veterinary science student who's failing all her science classes and a softball-playing lesbian who runs away from the ball. She chose her major because of her love of cows. She joined the softball team because of Louis.





	Something in the way she moooves

**Author's Note:**

> "28. Girl A joins a sports team even though she’s terrible at sports just so Girl B will do warm ups with her/tackle her/whatever else and they have an excuse to touch."
> 
> I'm sure the UC Davis Aggies Softball team are great. And I'm sure they have a schedule that is completely different from the fictional one depicted here. At least I researched the uniforms!
> 
> Thank you to my editor for all of the help!

The first time Harry sees her, Louis’s shouting, “Hey, curly, you sure you’re batting for the right team?” from across the Quad.

Of course, Harry doesn’t know that her name is Louis yet. She’s just innocently walking from the Coffee House to the library, struggling to find a study space. Just a freshman trying to fight through her pre-reqs so she can get to the _good_ part of large-animal veterinary science: the _farm animals_. But it’s two weeks in, and she still can’t quite follow what her study group is talking about when they meet to exchange notes over iced coffee, so to the library it is. A sanctuary of serenity, calm, and quiet.

If she’s intentionally taking the long way there, walking past the loud, bright gauntlet of pop-up tables for the campus clubs and socials vying to recruit passersby, well, nobody has to know about it.

The loudest, brightest, and certainly most distracting thing on the whole Quad is the girl with the “UC Davis 28” stenciled across her navy shirt. With the curved, tan shoulders and biceps peeking out from the rolled-up sleeves of said shirt. With the sporty headband holding back her cropped brown hair in a way that brings back all of Harry’s childhood Keira-Knightley-in- _Bend-It-Like-Beckham_ feelings with a ferocity that Harry isn’t prepared for. With the high, crackly voice that sounds like Rainbow Dash from _My Little Pony_. With the sparkly blue eyes that steal Harry’s breath and draw her like a magnet from her current position in front of the study abroad information table over to the giant “Aggies Softball” banner.

Today’s the day that Harry learns her name is Louis. She also learns that Louis is probably the funniest person she has ever met, though she’s too nervous around her extreme hotness to actually let herself laugh. She learns what softball is and how Louis thinks it’s hilarious that Harry’s arts magnet school had yoga classes instead of sports teams. It isn’t until Harry finally opens up her textbook in the library with the softball team brochure clutched in her fist that she realizes she completely forgot to tell Louis that she definitely _bats for the same team_. Sexually speaking. For a minute, Harry considers running back out onto the Quad to tell Louis that she’s a lesbian, too (since she has no doubt in her body that Louis is), just in case.

But the chances of failing her biochemistry quiz tomorrow seem much higher than the odds of Louis being interested in her, de-closeted lesbian or not, so she unclasps her overalls and bends over to glare at her textbook under a veil of long, messy curls, hoping to stare it into submitting and spilling all its secrets.

The second time Harry sees her, Louis’s strutting into the gym with a wide-legged stance that makes Harry bite her lip, as if it’s her _mouth_ that’s suddenly dripping and needs to be contained.

Louis walks past the row of elliptical machines, and Harry can’t make herself focus on the textbook she has propped up on her own machine’s console because she knows that Louis is now _somewhere behind her_. She could be five feet back or in the far corner by the free weights or in the locker room. She could be anywhere. It’s distracting.

Finally, she gives in, her feet slowing on the pedals as she looks over her shoulder and immediately spots Louis doing some kind of lifting thing on a complicated-looking black and chrome machine, every muscle in her arms standing out in sharp relief on her golden skin. She’s seated deep and comfortable on the machine, her hips grounded firmly to the metal. Harry wants to be the metal.

Louis’s eyes catch hers from across the room, and it startles Harry so badly that she turns back to her textbook instead of flirtily smiling like she _should_.

Still distracted but too nervous to look back at Louis, Harry looks to her left and then to her right. Heart sinking, she realizes that everyone in this massive row of ellipticals looks like a _straight girl_. Which means that Harry looks like a straight girl. She’s still not used to having to navigate this stuff. Back in high school, she and her best friend Zayn had enormous (and somewhat exaggerated) reputations for sleeping their way through the female half of the theater department, so people knew she was gay before they even met her. Two counties over and at a giant state university, her reputation hasn’t exactly preceded her. 

On the off-chance that Louis looks her way again, Harry wants to seem sporty and gay and _not_ like these straight girls, so she packs up her stuff and brings it all to the first unoccupied weight machine. At least she thinks it’s a weight machine. She doesn’t want to look like a novice, so she takes only a single, stealthy glance at the how-to diagram, but all she sees is a body with some muscles highlighted in red. She should probably know the names of those muscles because apparently being a large-animal veterinarian involves knowing the difference between a cow’s deltoid and trapezius. At least there’s a part of the machine that looks like a chair, which means it’s probably safe to sit there.

Harry fiddles with the handles (of which there are at least two too many) and pegs for several minutes, trying for an air of, “Gosh, this machine is so much more low-tech than the high-tech weight machines I regularly lift with at my usual gym.” Finally, she figures out how to do a lifting motion. Except that she pushes it to about the level of her head before her muscles scream, forcing her to drop it back into its starting position with a loud, attention-drawing, wince-inducing clatter.

She pretends to be done with that machine and lifts her eyes just high enough to see where she could go next but not high enough to make it obvious that she’s actually looking for the hot softball player in the basketball shorts, sports bra, and one of those really butch tank tops with the sleeves cut out low enough to show off abs and tummy rolls.

The machine that Louis was using a few minutes ago is empty now, and it seems as good as any to try next, so Harry does. At least she’s seen this one in (mind-meltingly hot) action, so she has some idea of which way her arms are supposed to move.

She’s pretty happy with herself when she manages to bring her hands up toward her chin a couple of times, the soft flesh of her arms bunching up in what almost looks like bicep muscles. But her good mood drops quickly when she catches some ugly jock looking at her from a few feet away, his face snarling in something that looks either like he’s derisively mocking her or checking her out. Harry never can tell the difference with boys; all she can ever tell is that she hates being looked at by them.

Her heart is fluttering in the bad way, and she’s suddenly aware of all the men around her, their presence somehow loud and threatening and making her feel like she’s not entitled to use these machines. Her skin prickles under the asthmatic cling of her tight clothes, which suddenly seem like a huge _mistake_. She sets the handles back down to their neutral position and starts to stand up, but her legs give out, and she plops back down onto the seat again like an idiot when Louis appears, standing over her like an angel backlit by fluorescent lights.

“Here, let me spot you,” Louis offers. Harry doesn’t know what that means, but she thinks that it’s simply because her brain has short-circuited from the sight and smell—fuck, what an amazing _smell!—_ of the sweat beading on Louis’s abundant bare skin.

Then Louis’s getting even fucking closer, leaning in to speak to Harry softly enough that they won’t be overheard. Deliriously, Harry glances around and notices that all the men have stopped looking her way, like Louis is some kind of man repellant. Harry’s envious of her ability, even in the same moment that she’s extremely, intensely attracted to it. Louis could kiss her right here on this bicep curl machine—which she’s currently explaining in detail—and Harry would open up right under her, wet and yielding and oblivious to anything else.

Of course, Louis doesn’t kiss her. She just gently, almost tentatively—her hands twitching away a few times like a bird uncertain of its landing perch—adjusts Harry’s grip on the rubber handles. If skin could lose its breath, that’s how Harry feels with Louis’s small, strong palms shifting over her knuckles.

Louis’s breathy voice asks for permission before touching Harry’s shoulder to hold it in place while she strains to lift the weight without relying on her body to lever it up. Harry wonders if it’s bad that she’s not wearing a sports bra because she looks less gay, or if it’s good that she’s not wearing a sports bra because her tits look great in the lacy number she has on today. Regardless, she’s pretty sure that Louis’s looking at her chest, and it makes Harry glad that she decided to work out in her leggings and crop top after all.

“Almost didn’t recognize you with your braids,” Louis murmurs. Without turning her neck and ruining Louis’s hold on her good posture, Harry looks over to try to gauge her expression. Louis’s smile falters slightly, and her eyes drop to her hands, which loosen their grip on Harry’s shoulder. “Then I noticed you were being microaggressioned out of your rightful spot here and thought you could use backup. I mean, _I_ always like having backup.”

“Dairy godmother,” Harry sighs gratefully on her next exhale, amazed that Louis was nice enough to come make a near-stranger feel more comfortable at the gym.

“Excuse me?” Louis asks, her eyes squinting in amusement, her voice even higher than usual.

Harry bites her lip, reprimanding herself. Back home, her everyday vocabulary included abundant references to the pun-filled advertisements for the local dairy company. Maybe she referenced the weird, vaguely sapphic cow jokes more than the average resident of her home county, but at least everybody there knew what she was referencing. She forgets that not everybody grew up seeing the grinning cartoon cow named Clover making gay milk puns on billboards up and down Route 116.

Bravely, she tries to explain this all to Louis, making sure to include, “Tip _Clo_ through your two lips,” and “ _Clo’s_ encounters of the _curd_ kind.”

Louis laughs at her, outright _laughs at her_ , one of her hands coming to curl politely and delicately over her mouth as if the laughter isn’t just as visible in her eyes. Her pinky sticks out of her loose fist like her laughter is a tea cup, and Harry’s so endeared that she doesn’t even care if she’s being laughed at for growing up in dairy country.

“Where are you from, anyway?” Harry asks, feeling weirdly confident enough to make her voice sound mockingly defensive.

“LA,” Louis answers, her own reply only increasing her laughter because, obviously, why would someone from Los Angeles understand the comedy gold of cow jokes?

A little while later, Harry is _spotting_ Louis as she does chin-ups with her knees on a platform that goes up and down, her underarm hairs soft and glistening with sweat in the sculpted crevice between her _pecs_ and her _lats_. Harry has learned a lot about fitness today. She wants to learn more; she wants to work out with Louis all the time.

She tells Louis that she wants to join the softball team.

Louis’s fluid motions jerk to a pause halfway to the top, but she starts back up again without acknowledging her surprise. Harry hopes that maybe Louis has just realized that Harry, too, is gay.

Continuing with her chin-ups, Louis tells her that she’d be very welcome on the team, that everyone would be glad to accept her into their ranks. She sounds more impersonal than she had been a few minutes ago. Harry speculates that she probably takes her team captain responsibilities very seriously and therefore speaks professionally to all potential recruits.

“You can come try out on Tuesday,” Louis says once she has climbed off the machine and is toweling off her face and neck. She bites her lip as if choosing her words carefully. “Even if you don’t, you know, make the team, I promise, everyone will be accepting.”

Harry feels too good to be looking for an insult in Louis’s implication that she might not be good enough to make the team. What could be so hard about softball, anyway? 

Harry hates softball. The glove they give her to wear stinks like dead animal skin, and it’s heavy and cumbersome and she can’t figure out what it’s good for. The ball is _really hard_ , not a _soft_ ball at all, and she feels betrayed by its name when it slams into her stomach and knocks the wind out of her.

Louis comes running over to apologize for throwing so hard, and maybe if she put her hand on Harry’s stomach, her soothing would work. But she stands at an awkward distance, her hands flitting out toward Harry and then retreating again. Harry feels pitied. It’s not the best feeling.

“How come this never happened to Madonna?” Harry whines with probably strained humor, hoping she can make an _A League of Their Own_ reference without drawing attention to the fact that a) it’s her only point of reference for this kind of thing, b) she made Zayn watch it with her illegally online last Friday as preparation for try-outs because she vaguely remembered seeing it and thinking Rosie O’Donnell was hot when she was a kid, and c) she came to try-outs dressed almost exactly like Geena Davis’s character, and it wasn’t an accident.

Louis slips her glove off and then back on again, fidgeting. “Did Madonna have a baseball music video or something?”

Clearly, not everyone in California knows Clover Stornetta dairy jokes, and not every softball-playing lesbian has seen _A League of Their Own_. Harry’s surprised to find that she’s equal parts relieved and disappointed that Louis didn’t notice her Geena Davis-esque short-sleeve plaid shirt tucked into high-waisted ‘40s blue jeans.

After that, Harry starts ducking and running away from the balls everyone keeps throwing at her. When Louis has Harry and a couple of other new girls line up near what she tells Harry is home plate, Harry starts to get nervous about having a pitcher throw a ball directly at her. She may not know much about baseball, but her family went to a San Francisco Giants playoffs game the year that the team got exciting, just like every other middle class family within a hundred-mile radius. She remembers being confused by most of the numbers, except for pitching speeds because those were in _miles per hour_ , which is a normal metric—not a _ball_ or an _RBI_. Those pitchers threw the ball at _ninety miles per hour_ , which is how fast her dad drove when he was pissed off. Harry hates pitchers.

When it’s her turn, she walks up to the plate and holds the bat out as far away from her body as possible. Her breath shudders out when Louis comes up next to her and manipulates Harry’s grip on the bat, just like she had on the handles of the bicep curl machine. “Niall, can you help Harry adjust her stance?” Louis calls, voice bright and lovely. It takes a second for Harry to realize that Louis’s not talking to her.

There’s a heavy hand clapping between her shoulder blades, and it’s not Louis’s. Harry turns her head to see Niall, the stocky brunette with the visor who’s always rolling her eyes. Harry grinds her teeth, frustrated to be so bad at softball that Louis doesn’t even want to bother doing the work of correcting her stance. Instead, Louis silently bites her thumbnail as Niall presses her hips up against Harry’s ass, and all Harry wants is for Louis to be the one tilting her pelvis just right.

When the ball comes at her, Harry hits it with all the hatred and frustration of a girl who’s crushing on the unattainable softball team captain, failing all three of her science classes, and hasn’t gotten laid once since she got here.

The impact hurts all the way up her arms and into her shoulders. She can’t see where the ball goes, but it must be good because Louis screeches and latches onto her, jumping up and down. Their hips rub against each other and then their chests, and Harry can taste Louis’s breath as she shouts congratulations three inches from her face. She feels dizzy, elated, and delirious at the same time. Then there are more hands on her back, more cheers, more hugs. The agricultural smog burns away in an instant, and Louis’s blue eyes sparkle brightly in the new sunlight.

Harry loves softball.

“I can’t believe I’m roomies with an athlete. You run away from the ball when we play volleyball in your pool...with a plastic, inflatable ball.”

Harry winces, deciding not to admit that joining the softball team hasn’t changed her running-away-from-balls behavior. “Are you suggesting I’m not actually good at sports?” she counters mildly. Zayn’s curled up on the bottom half of Harry’s standard-issue dorm-room bed, even though her own standard-issue dorm-room bed is only five feet away. She’s awash in delight and relief every time she remembers that Zayn, too, grew up in Sonoma County and therefore knows all the Clover Stornetta jokes that everyone at UC Davis is apparently missing out on. Grinning to herself, since Zayn’s face is buried in _Principles of Sustainable Food and Agriculture,_ she says, “Clo ahead, _milk_ my day.”

Zayn stopped laughing at Harry’s jokes about a decade ago, but at least she gets them. “Whatever, Danny Zuko,” she sniffs, adjusting her glasses on her nose.

Harry gasps. “ _Grease_ is her favorite movie!” she exclaims. She and Louis got to the favorite-movies-list-exchange point in their friendship (or teammate-ship) just two days ago, after Harry’s first official practice as an Aggie softball player.

Zayn sighs, though Harry can see the corners of the smile she’s trying to hide in her textbook. They’ve always given each other a hard time about the girls they’re obsessed with, ever since middle school when Zayn got super fixated on the queen bitch of all the popular girls at their school, a girl whose initials were literally V.A.G. The jokes were low-hanging fruit.

“Why am I not surprised that you know the favorite movie of the girl you’re in love with when you don’t even know the chemical equation of—”

“I’m not in love with her!” Harry yelps, absurdly defensive but unable to stop herself.

Zayn looks up from her book as though this is an unusual response. Which it is. They joke about being in love with girls all the time, but it’s not like either of them has ever even been in love. Those words don’t mean anything when used in reality because the real, serious kind of _in love_ happens when you’re twenty-five and your friend introduces you to a hot older butch lady who owns a huge ranch house and humanely trains horses and is somehow a millionaire who never has to work.

As if matching confession for confession, Zayn looks sheepishly back to her book and murmurs, “I’ve got a date with a boy on Friday.”

The sting of betrayal is too massive for Harry to process, so she sticks to the only part of her surprise that she can operationalize. “But my first game is on Friday!”

“Duh, where do you think I’m taking him?” Zayn asks, fiddling with the short lavender hair on the top of her head and not looking up from her book.

Harry hums internally, her chest feeling tight as she picks up her anatomy textbook from where it fell on the floor.

During practice, Harry keeps running into Louis. When she’s trying to run to second base, she runs into second baseman Louis instead. When she’s trying to tag Louis out, she sort of touches her with her other hand instead.

Softball is a frustratingly non-physical sport, with abstract rules that Harry doesn’t understand. She gets that she’s supposed to catch the ball whenever she can, and she’s supposed to throw it at whoever is yelling and gesturing to her. But she’s magnetically drawn to Louis, so she’s more aware of Louis’s position on the field than she is of the ball’s.

One time, she hits the ball, runs over first base, and then heads to second because she knows Louis’s there, but when she looks up, she sees that Louis’s already holding the ball. On some level, Harry sort of understands that she’s not supposed to run _toward_ someone who’s holding the ball. But it’s Louis, so she can’t help herself.

The sad part is when Louis’s face falls, like she’s disappointed that Harry’s running toward her. Harry slows down, her feet feeling heavy in the cleats that she spent the last of her student loan money on.

“Harry,” Louis sighs, as Harry jogs until she’s close enough that Louis can reach out with the ball in her big glove and hold Harry at arm’s length. Harry tries to use an ironic smile to cover up the fact that she wants to cry. Louis’s voice is so soft, so pitying. “You should try to run back to first, like, if you see second base has the ball.” There’s a single mocking whistle from someone—probably Alicia—and a couple of awkward, audible coughs from the rest of the team. Louis’s voice is even quieter when she adds, “I don’t want Coach to bench you, you’re our best batter.”

Harry looks over to their coach, a boring, relatively inoffensive guy who’s practically asleep in the bleachers, and doesn’t doubt that he would bench her, rather than spend time teaching her how to play better. Louis’s the one holding this team together, and she’s only a junior. The problem is that Louis also makes Harry weak-kneed and distracted, so any instruction she provides is less efficient than it could be.

It’s been two weeks since Harry met Louis, so she’s past the point of being able to stop herself from making a fool of herself flirting. She leans into the hard-edged glove that’s digging into the front of her shoulder and murmurs, “I’ll be good, promise.”

Louis swallows hard in frustration, withdrawing her hand and throwing the ball back to the pitcher as though Harry isn’t standing there at all.

Harry isn’t benched for the game. In fact, she hits a home run in the eighth inning, which earns her a smacking wet kiss on the cheek from Niall, of all people.

“Thank you, Harry!” Niall screams in her ear, three times too loud. Harry grins across the dugout at Louis, who’s sending her a thumbs up from where her elbows are propped on her splayed knees. Harry was kind of hoping that Louis wouldn’t roll her sleeves up over her shoulders for the official game because it makes her drool and lose focus. It’s easier to play, though, when Louis isn’t on the field at the same time as her. She has no magnetic draw to anyone else and can better focus on the rules of the game, no matter how stupid they are.

“Geez, didn’t know you were _that_ invested in winning the game,” Harry jokes. In the past few days, she has gotten to know the girls well enough to give them a hard time, mostly through _them_ giving _her_ a _very_ hard time and her putting up with it. Still, a win is a win.

Niall chuckles darkly. “My girlfriend and I have a competition going: if I win more ball games, or if she wins more swim meets, the winner gets Christmas with their family, ha ha.” Harry looks in the direction of Niall’s hand, over to where a tall, broad-shouldered girl with a boyish mess of dark brown curls on top of her head is blushing with her chin resting on her hand. She doesn’t look very upset about this losing streak. In fact, she looks like a puppy dog trying but failing to conceal how excited it is.

Harry’s heart aches in envy of whatever _relationship_ Niall has with this girl. “What’s her name?” she asks, the excitement of her home run quickly sapping into self-pity. She’s never had a girlfriend who was serious enough to spend the holidays with.

“Shawn!” Niall tells her fondly, stupidly. There’s an ironic twist to her smile, the same kind there would be on Louis’s face if Louis had a girlfriend to talk about. As far as Harry has been able to tell, she _doesn’t_. Which means she might not be the girlfriend type. Which makes Harry sad.

Niall startles her by asking, “You got a girlfriend here?”

She’s arching an eyebrow at Harry, and her eyebrow arches are always somewhat disconcerting and judgmental. The compliment of Niall being able to tell that she’s gay is somewhat lost in her anxiety about being unable to procure any romantic attachment aside from their mutual team captain.

“No,” Harry replies, feeling like she’s a step behind from where she should be, even though she has single-handedly scored half the team’s points. She looks out into the stands and spots Zayn, who blows her a kiss as though she’s been waiting to, and Harry smiles. She feels like Zayn’s friendship can earn her cool points; Zayn is effortlessly glamorous. “But my best friend and roommate is here.” She points to Zayn, only just noticing the boy pressed against Zayn’s side, his focus zoomed in on his date like she’s the only reason he could ever be compelled to attend a girls’ softball game.

“Damn,” Niall whistles, crossing her arms. “Why do hot girls like that have to think they’re straight?”

“Just cuz she’s with a guy doesn’t mean she’s straight,” Harry spits out, fiery and pissy and defensive. She just feels so lost and misunderstood, as if her whole history of being king lesbians with Zayn for four years of high school means nothing here because Zayn’s been on one date with a dude. As if nobody has ever seen a Clover Stornetta billboard. As if caring for animals is a hard science. As if you have to do chin-ups to be seen as gay. As if her identity doesn’t really exist.

Niall takes a step back, putting her palms up in front of her in surrender. “Sorry, didn’t know I was pressing buttons.”

Harry tries not to let it ruin her night, but she’s sad. She’s sad that Zayn’s dating a boy for the first time since that stupid French exchange student in ninth grade. She’s sad that Niall thought Zayn’s straight. She’s sad that Niall’s sitting next to Louis, whispering inside jokes that Harry isn’t in on. She’s sad that she still doesn’t understand the stupid fucking rules of softball. She’s sad that she can’t even enjoy the victory of her home run, which she remembers from the Giants game is a pretty big deal.

But then, after they’ve won the game, Louis stands up on the bench in the locker room, shakes a bottle of champagne, shouts, “Here’s to all the pussy we’ll get when we make it to the championship! Except for Gabby and Ana because they like dick!” and pops open the bottle before chugging it. Harry’s mouth runs absolutely dry as she watches Louis’s throat swallow, watches the white foam dripping down her face and neck, watches her lashes flutter against her cheek, watches her sniffle and shake her body like a dog when the carbonation fizzles in her brain. Harry can’t decide if she’s jealous of whatever pussy Louis sucks like that, or if she’s turned on by the aesthetically delicious cut of Louis’s cheekbones as they hollow. 

Panting, with the champagne still spilling over her fist, Louis looks over where Harry’s standing at the back of the crowd and smiles, softly, as Harry looks down. For some reason, Harry feels more alone than she has since the first night she moved into her cold, empty dorm room.

Harry has a midterm exam in her bio class that she skips practice to study for. She gets a C-minus.

At their next game, she manages to bat one of her teammates in from third to home, but she gets called out at first. She also runs away from the ball when she’s in the outfield, and the opposition scores two runs in the time it takes the center fielder to race over and collect the ball from where it’s lying on the green grass beside Harry.

They have to travel for the next game, but Harry stays back because she has biochem the next day.

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… _in Canada_ ,” Niall sings the next time they meet, terse, yet dramatic and guilt-trippy if you know her. Niall doesn’t want to go to Shawn’s family’s house in Toronto for Christmas, but it’s not like it’s Harry’s responsibility to prevent that from happening. 

“Shut it, Niall,” Louis scolds as she comes up behind them in the locker room. “Harry’s got other things going on. ‘Sides, it’s not her fault we suck as a team.” She barely manages not to sound bitter, which gives Harry pause and prompts her to shift the focus. “I hear Canada’s beautiful in the winter.”

Niall and Louis both look at her like she’s said something verifiably insane.

“I bet you and Shawn can go to your house for Thanksgiving?” Harry tries again.

Niall slams her locker and stomps away but laughs at the same time. Harry feels loved—she thinks.

“Are you going back for Thanksgiving?” Louis asks, curiosity in her voice as she leans against the nearest locker, seemingly too tense to be that casual. Harry wishes she could knead the tension from those shoulders, make Louis stop worrying about doing the job of the coach and the team captain all at once.

“Probably. Zayn’s got a car—that’s my roommate. And best friend. From high school. I go back with her whenever she goes.”

Louis is looking at the floor now, and Harry can see the dimple in her cheek where she’s biting the inside of it. “Oh, that’s nice!” she says, voice reedy, trying too hard to be cheery or something.

Wanting to say all the right things to make Louis relax, Harry amends, “Unless there’s something else I should be doing!”

Louis’s eyes always spear her with their light blue shine, including now, as they dart up at her, startled, before Louis chuckles. “No, honey, but…”

Harry’s heart bursts every time Louis calls her or any of the girls _honey_. She’s just so gay, it’s inspiring. “But?” Harry prompts so that she doesn’t echo back, “ _Honey_?”

“I’ve got an improv performance that weekend, if you’re in town...I mean, if you and _Zayn_ are in town.”

Harry looks into Louis’s hopeful, earthy eyes, steady as a blue sulphuric geyser pool of unknown depth, and in an instant, her heart absolutely _breaks_. _“Zayn,”_ Louis had said, so carefully. Like Zayn was who she was really talking about.

And, like, of course. Zayn’s more fucking gorgeous than any human has a right to be. Zayn was sitting in the bleachers the night of their first game, wind-pinked and silk-shirted and perfect. Harry had told Niall that Zayn wasn’t straight, and Niall had surely passed that information along to Louis. Louis, who probably wasn’t the _girlfriend_ type, but then again, neither was Zayn, really. Harry’s stomach _aches_ at the thought of Louis and Zayn fucking, in her own dorm room, in her own _bed_ , maybe, since Zayn seemed to spend more time there than she did in her own.

“Oh!” Harry exclaims.

“Not that there’s any pressure, of course!” Louis takes a step back, attempting to lean casually against the next furthest locker. 

“Oh, of course not,” Harry says, trying so hard to sound sincere that she forgets to figure out what she’s trying to do. Make it easy for the biggest crush in her entire life to fuck her best friend? Confused, she opens her locker and turns to strip off her shirt. If Louis wants to fuck Harry’s best friend, surely it doesn’t matter if Harry strips in front of her in her sports bra, with her tummy hanging out. She’s got to get her uniform on for practice, and if it doubles as a masochistic celebration of how _not-_ attracted Louis is to her, despite her joining a fucking _sports_ team just to seem available and gay, then that’s cool.

When she looks up, Louis’s gone. 

Harry scrapes through her midterms and barely manages to do more good than harm on her softball team for the next three weeks, which is more than she can say for their coach.

Even knowing that she doesn’t have a chance, she grows fond of standing in left field, where she can watch Louis kick ass as shortstop. “I’m versatile,” Louis tells her with waggling eyebrows one night when Harry’s finally starting to solidify her understanding of the positions. Harry blushes because she knows that Louis’s making a sex joke, and she’s supposed to be neutral about Louis’s sex jokes, but it hurts because she, too, is _versatile_ , and her skin itches with the need to show Louis just how _versatile_ she can be. 

Out in left field, she’s free to check out Louis’s ass in her uniform pants, which are tighter on her than they are on any of the other players. Harry wonders if Louis’s still wearing her freshman fifteen, if the freshman fifteen is something that straight people made up, or if Louis’s ass has always just been that mouthwateringly thick and glorious. Maybe it’s all those squats she does at the gym or the contemporary dance class she’s taking for her theater major elective.

“Why’d you choose Davis?” Harry asks one day while Georgia’s at bat, the perfect opportunity for a quick question because Georgia always strikes out. Harry has developed a bit of pride about being a better batter than over half the other girls. She tries not to smile too broadly as she calmly chats with Louis while almost every other batter hits foul after foul.

Louis gives her a scrunched-up, curious look and then shrugs. “It was far away, different, but still a UC...I didn’t get into Berkeley,” she declares as if it’s a hilarious joke. When Harry only half-heartedly laughs because she doesn’t really get what’s so funny, Louis picks up on it and asks, “What ‘bout you?”

Harry looks out at the pitcher’s mound. Of all the grassy fields she dreamed of when coming to Davis for its strong agriculture and veterinary programs, a softball field was not the one she expected to be spending the most time in. “I want to be a large-animal veterinarian.”

Louis is laughing, breathily and gently, before Harry even finishes. “Aren’t you, like, well, _struggling_ with your science classes? I thought you were just taking those for breadth requirements.”

Harry’s jaw sets. She feels like the rug has been pulled out from under her, a near-constant, familiar sensation that she’s experienced since the second week of class, after she had her first content-based quiz. “They’re pre-reqs.”

All too abruptly, Louis stops laughing, and Harry lets her head hang in shame. “I just love animals.”

There’s a quiet, heavy pause as the opposition’s pitcher winds up, and Harry realizes, suddenly, that she doesn’t even know which campus they’re at. All she saw was the inside of her textbook on the bus ride and then the locker room. Maybe it’s UC Berkeley, and that’s why Louis made that bitter joke about not getting admitted here. The entire crowd breathes as Georgia strikes out.

Exhaling later than everyone else, Louis whispers, “You love girls, too.”

Harry freezes, not knowing how to act when Louis’s the one bringing up her sexuality. On her own, she could joke about being a lesbian until every straight girl in her Intro to Academic Writing course freaked out, and she could scare away all the girls on her and Zayn’s floor just by entering the bathroom while they were talking about boys. But she doesn’t know how to deal with her gayness being brought up by the person who makes her feel gayer than she’s ever felt in her entire life. The person who makes her realize with stark clarity that she grew up with fierce crushes on Rosie O’Donnell in _A League of Their Own_ _and_ Keira Knightley in _Bend It Like Beckham_.

Louis voice drops to something like a whisper. “Doesn’t mean you have to join the softball team. There are other…options.”

Is this heartfelt advice, one gay to another? Or a gentle let-down? Harry can’t tell, and the fact that she can’t tell is making her breath run short. Trying to breathe deeply, trying not to hyperventilate, she grabs her head between both hands and walks to the spot where she’s supposed to warm up for batting. She can’t remember what it’s called. She can’t remember anything except the sting of Louis telling her that _she’s doing it wrong_. Whatever _it_ is, college, lesbianism, lesbianism at college, life, love, happiness. She’s doing it wrong.

She hits a home run. 

It’s easy for Harry to distract herself from heartbreak because she’s failing everything but her writing class. She doubles down on study groups with her science genius classmates, spends every night at the Coffee House in study groups unless she’s playing softball. She spends every morning in the library, desperate to avoid the foreign sight of Zayn sleeping peacefully with a boy in her bed. A cis-straight boy! Harry doesn’t know what’s real anymore. 

She misses one home game because Zayn’s staying in that night, and she hasn’t watched _ER_ reruns with Zayn on Netflix in forever, so she decides to take the opportunity to do so. Her track record goes downhill from there, and she starts missing games left and right. It hurts to be there, on the field, where Louis doesn’t think she belongs. Where she doesn’t feel like she ever belonged in the first place, no matter how many runs she scores. Where Louis’s eyes sparkle under the bright field lights.

She gets less and less validation from Zayn, who’s lost in a stupid relationship with a boy she seems to be dating merely because he’s more into her than she is into him, so Harry decides to channel her frustration into the first draft of a final paper on children’s literature in her writing class. 

Trapped between the weight of Zayn’s emotional absence and Louis’s increasing distance—the span of green grass between left field and the diamond ever growing—Harry doesn’t talk to her sister about it at _all_ during their pie-baking marathon the day before Thanksgiving. She doesn’t even talk to her _mom_ about it while they’re preparing the turkey the next morning, her hands crammed rather morosely down into the ribcage of the poor bird as she thinks this might be as close as she’ll ever get to performing veterinary medicine.

She ends up begging Zayn to come back to campus early with her, so they pack up Zayn’s ancient Nissan Leaf, grab some coffee, and put on a truly random ‘00s road mix while Harry eats pecan pie out of tupperware and listens to Zayn complain about the white upper middle class half of her extended family. They take the winding country roads instead of the freeway, only stopping once, to charge the car for a few minutes.

Harry drags Zayn to Louis’s improv group’s performance on Saturday, her logic being that if she can get Zayn and Louis to sleep together, then at least Harry can relate to Zayn again and let her crush on Louis die for good. This plan goes awry when Louis takes her shirt off in the middle of the performance.

Everyone else on stage takes their shirts off, too, no matter how flat or busty their torsos are, but Louis’s chest draws Harry’s attention like nothing else; it looks stilled, breathless, yet proud and buoyant all at once. Her tits sit perfectly on her chest, big enough for Harry to suck into her huge mouth, small enough that they don’t sway when she struts across the stage.

The production is all about being _gay_ , Harry belatedly realizes. It’s all about sexuality, jokes about coming out of the closet, beards, the grossness of heterosexuality. This improv group is _gay_.

Harry sizzles with excitement because it’s the first gay cultural experience she’s had on campus all quarter. Buried in classwork, drowning in softball, she hasn’t had a single change to explore the theater scene or the gay scene on campus at all. She’s _missed this_. It’s a taste of what she had in high school, a group of joking friends who all knew it was better to be gay.

At one point, Louis dramatically covers her nipples with a gasp, and she looks into the audience with a Shakespearean level of fake shock. Her eyes meet Harry’s, and her cheeks go pink. 

It’s then that Harry remembers why Louis invited her to this performance in the first place: so that Zayn would come. So that Zayn would see her eating up the stage with her perfect tits out. 

Fighting an equally Shakespearean urge to dramatically leave the room and stomp all the way back to her dorm, Harry forces herself to stay until the end of the show. Zayn seems bored beside her, and even though Zayn _always_ seems bored, Harry feels herself getting angry at her for it. How dare she be bored at Louis’s perfect tits. How dare she turn her nose up at Louis’s interest.

“So this is her leather catsuit?” Zayn asks, once the cafe’s lights are up and they’re clapping along with the dozen other people who straggled in on Thanksgiving weekend.

“What?” Harry asks because Louis isn’t wearing a leather catsuit, she’s not wearing anything but a pair of sweatpants. The manager of the cafe is nervous about it, too; Harry can tell she was unprepared for the show’s content by the way she’s repeatedly scanning the front windows as if a cop is about to show up and arrest them all for public indecency.

“Danny Zuko joins the track team...the _softball team_ ,” Zayn clarifies, talking especially slowly, as if Harry would be too stupid to follow along if she spoke normally. “Sandy gets a leather suit...you know, compromise.”

Harry gets too caught up in Zayn’s misreading of _Grease_ to consider the actual content of what she’s trying to say. “It’s not really compromise because they both go Danny’s way in the end, I mean, it’s not like Danny keeps his letterman jacket on, it’s typical sexist—”

“You know, we’ve had this talk once or twice before, Harry,” Zayn interjects. She’s given up applauding, so Harry claps twice as hard out of spite when the ensemble takes a second group bow on stage.

“Straight relationships always have a fucked-up power dynamic.”

“Good thing I’m _not straight_ , then,” Zayn hisses, sounding as though she’d rather be bitching about her mother’s rich aunt from Los Gatos than talk about her own _boyfriend_ since that’s what he apparently is.

“She’s right here in front of you,” Harry cries out, overly emotional, her seams showing. She just wants this all to be over and done with. “Why don’t you just fuck her?”

Zayn’s eyes fall shut. Harry watches them twitch agitatedly beneath their lids. “Um, I don’t know, maybe because she wants to fuck you? Y’know, since you’re both _real lesbians_.”

After all Harry’s longing to stomp off the premises, _Zayn_ is the one to do so. Head bowed, she pushes past the people already lining up in the aisle between the folding chairs and is the first to leave the building.

Not knowing where else to look, Harry turns her head to the makeshift stage, which is really just an unglamorous, cleared-out area of an old cafe when the lights are on. Louis gives her a sad look, and Harry’s heart hurts _so badly_ because she just wants Louis to be sad for _her_ sake, not because her seduction of Zayn apparently backfired.

She goes outside and sits on the grass for a minute. It’s been getting cold at night, and there’s a single yellow dandelion flower on the little patch of lawn in front of the cafe covered in dew. She plucks it and goes back inside.

Louis’s now wearing an oversized UC Davis sweatshirt, but her nipples, cold from exposure, are still hard and visible through the thick fabric. Trying hard not to stare but also trying to avoid her team captain’s heartbreakingly cold blue eyes, Harry extends the dandelion out into the space between them.

“Thanks, hun,” Louis says, _stupidly, cruelly_ sincere. “Did you have a good time?”

Harry looks up long enough to notice that Louis’s wearing eyeliner. It’s the first time she’s seen her in makeup. Her eyes drop back down to the peaks of her breasts in the folds of her sweatshirt.

“I did,” she mutters, bracing herself for some inquiry about her gorgeous friend who stormed off all dramatically and beautifully and whatever.

“We’re, um, we’re an LGBT group, and I…I didn’t want you to think, like…you only had one option.”

It’s not at all what Harry’s expecting to hear. 

Apparently, Harry takes too long to process this, and Louis must regret her word choice, because she starts backpedaling. “Don’t get me wrong, softball is great, and everyone loves having you on the team!” she babbles, as though trying to convince Harry that she never said anything else in the first place.

It kind of works.

Harry rubs her head and sighs, “I have a headache.”

Louis’s hand finds its way to her forehead, Harry melts, and then both Louis’s hands are on her, two sets of fingers rubbing into her temples. Harry tries not to moan, but she fails.

When Harry opens her eyes, Louis’s _right there_. Harry’s next breath comes out in a shudder that falls on Louis’s lips, which look stained red from wine or someone else’s lipstick.

Harry desperately wants a kiss. But she knows that all Louis wants to give her is more advice. As soon as she sees Louis’s lips part, probably to tell her she should quit softball and change majors, Harry mumbles something about aspirin and runs away.

At one in the morning, Harry gets a text from Louis: “ _Sorry about tonight, if I fucked things up with your friend. I thought it would help, didn’t mean to do the opposite_.”

Louis’s text seems absurdly sober to Harry, who’s been helping herself to the vodka that Zayn hides in her dresser for the times when she likes to pretend she’s a cold hard bitch instead of the bougie emotional red wine bitch she truly is. After three absolutely excruciating shots of straight liquor, Harry can’t tell the subject or object of Louis’s sentences, if things are fucked up between her and Zayn, or Louis and Zayn, or her and Louis. Who exactly does Louis think she’s helping?

“ _Help you get Iliad?”_ Harry texts back, immensely proud of herself for the lack of red underline before she hits send.

In the morning, when she hasn’t received a response, she realizes that she didn’t spell everything right. Not at all.

 _“Sorry,”_ Louis texts back on Monday morning as Harry’s running to class, already five minutes late. She doesn’t know what Louis’s sorry about, and she doesn’t know how to feel, so she doesn’t text back.

Harry’s bio teacher tells her that she’s going to have to retake the class in the spring unless she gets an A on the final. It’s the perfect excuse to quit softball without making it personal.

Wanting to avoid the softball field for the rest of her miserable life, Harry makes the trek to Louis’s off-campus house. She’s been here twice before, once for Halloween and once for a post-win party, so she vaguely recognizes the girl who opens the door, but it’s through a haze of jungle-juice memories. The girl was dressed as Batgirl, Harry’s pretty sure.

Batgirl leads her up to Louis’s room on the second floor and knocks on the door much louder than Harry would have had the courage to, so loud that it cuts through the blaring, distorted punk guitars coming through the walls.

Batgirl leaves before Louis answers, so when the door finally opens, it’s just Harry, standing pigeon-toed in her overalls, clutching her softball uniform to her chest.

Louis’s eyes go wide, and she leaves the door open as she runs to the laptop on the windowsill-slash-desk to shut off the music. “Hey, um,” she stutters, short of breath from running across the room and then back to the door. Too tight to be casual, she rests an elbow on the door frame and props her opposite hand on her hip. “What’s up?”

Distracted by the view of Louis’s room, which she’s never seen before, Harry has a hard time remembering why she’s here. Then the folded softball uniform scratches across her cleavage, and it all comes flooding back.

“I have to quit the team.”

“Yeah,” Louis agrees, emptily. “Uhm, okay.” Her words are weirdly bright, and Harry doesn’t know what to make of them.

“Just ‘okay’?” she confirms, doubtfully. She didn’t think Louis would be heartbroken, but she thought she would be disappointed in Harry’s decision to let down the entire team before they even made it to championships.

“I mean, I’ll...the team, we’ll miss you. But.”

“But?” Harry tucks her curls behind her ears and remembers Louis calling her _curly_ from across the Quad. It had seemed so romantic, then. Everything had seemed romantic.

Louis’s breath is even. Too even. “I’m glad that the team helped you find your comfort zone here. I know...we all knew you were mostly there to figure out your identity.”

“My _identity?”_ Harry scoffs. Why the fuck was Louis talking about her _identity_ when she was pretty much breaking up their friendship-teammate-ship for all eternity to go join a science convent.

“I...we wanted you to feel supported and, like, see that it’s okay in college. I didn’t… I tried not to push you, I _really_ didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, and I--” Louis appears to stop herself, frustrated. Her jaw clenches, and she pulls away from the door, gesturing to the bed, which has a Muppets duvet on it, as if this moment needed to get any weirder. 

“Muppets?” Harry asks, fully aware that she’s distracting herself from the topic at hand.

Louis shrugs as they both sit down on the mattress. “Sorry, I don’t really have chairs.”

“It’s not what I pictured,” Harry comments, her guard down, too self-deprecating in the moment to care if she’s making a fool of herself by admitting that she’s fantasized about being in Louis’s bed.

“Les—,” Louis takes a breath. “Well, lesbians come in all sorts. You don't have to be a softball player to touch girls.”

With her footing gone out from under her long ago, Harry recklessly moans, “It’s not girls, plural, that I wanted to touch. Just one. One girl...stupid me.”

Louis’s looking at the hardwood floor as her fingers tap out a rhythm on each of her spread knees. “Ah, yes, unrequited love. If you, uh, want to, like, talk about it? That’s…okay. Like, I’m here. For you. Even if you quit the team.”

“Aren’t we talking about it now?” Harry asks morosely, flopping back to lie on Louis’s Muppets bedspread, her feet flopping like dead fish beside the spill of her uniform on the floor. If Louis wants to completely humiliate her and crush all her hopes, that’s fine. Maybe it’ll help her get over being in love with her former team captain.

“If you want to, well, use her name...I think that helps, sometimes.”

“What,” Harry sighs, “ _Louis?”_ in the same instant that Louis says, “ _Zayn_?”

“What?”

“What?”

“Zayn?” Harry asks, her eyes burning as she stares at the white stucco ceiling, trying to force it to yield its secrets. Trying to get it to spell out why Louis said _Zayn_. Her heart is fluttering as fast as it does when she’s run two bases in a row and is completely out of breath.

“You’re in love with your best friend,” Louis tells her, like she’s explaining Harry to Harry.

“My team captain,” Harry corrects incredulously, still frowning at the ceiling full of lies.

There’s silence. Then Louis flops back onto the bedspread, too, their toes knocking together on the floor as they both glare at the stucco.

“ _You_ want to _bang Zayn_ ,” Harry accuses. It comes out like a balloon full of carbon dioxide instead of helium, sinking immediately, rejected from the party.

“I do _not!”_ Louis shouts, as loud and bright as she was the very first day Harry met her, as she is every time she’s calling for Harry to throw her the ball from left field.

“Well _this_ came out of left field,” Harry says, the only thought that can make it from her brain to her mouth, her mind a swirling mass of stucco. Louis doesn’t want to fuck Zayn. Louis thought _she_ wanted to fuck Zayn. Louis doesn’t know that Harry has slept with girls before.

Louis doesn’t know that Harry wants to fuck _her_?

“Wait, but…wait, why did you join the team?”

Harry gives up on the stucco and lets her head drop to the side to study Louis’s profile, so delicate, so strong. No headband, no visor. Just Louis, hair damp from a shower, dressed in a band shirt and _Star Wars_ boxers. “To impress you,” Harry explains, matter of factly. She thought it had been painfully obvious for the past two months.

Louis’s forehead scrunches up so cutely, like she’s staring into the sun, as her hands fiddle with the hem of her shirt. “But, wait, like, why did you bring Zayn to my show then? I thought I was being a good wingman!”

Harry bites her lip, testing her restraint before deciding to let the truth roll off her tongue. “By what, being so hot that I was a huge mess, and Zayn actually called me out on it?”

Their next breaths come out in unison, both of them shuddering hisses.

“Sorry if that’s weird,” Harry says. She feels dead and simultaneously more alive than she’s been all quarter. If Louis didn’t _know_ , now she _does._ Maybe the possibility hadn’t crossed her mind before. Maybe, now, she would consider the idea that Harry wasn’t a bad piece of ass after all. Harry will take the scraps where she can get them, even if Zayn yells at her later for putting her heart in harm’s way, so she strives for a casual tone when she says, “I’ve been down to fuck since the day we met.”

She waits for Louis to turn her head so that they can make eye contact, shrug like fuck buddies who _might as well_ , and then go for it.

But Louis doesn’t turn her head. She lurches up, over, and then onto Harry, propping herself in a plank so that her biceps bulge just inches from Harry’s face. Harry looks at them defiantly because Louis’s trying to look straight into her eyes, and that, well. That’s terrifying.

“You said _in love with_ , not _down to fuck_.”

“What?” Harry squeaks nervously, addressing Louis’s left bicep, her mouth watering. She wants to bite it.

“I said that you were in love with your best friend, and you said your _team captain_. Me. That’s not just _down to fuck_ , right?”

The last question sounds slightly hysterical and instantly activates Harry’s guilt sequence. The last thing she wants to do is to make Louis upset.

She turns her face up to meet Louis’s eyes, and then they’re _right there_ , her lips parted, her breath tasting like mint and sex. Her jaw-length hair tickling Harry’s chin.

“I’m, uh...more...than…,” she stutters, eyes fluttering to Louis’s lips. Her hips twitch up, and she feels Louis’s right on top of them as her hands make fists in Louis’s shirt, desperate to hold onto something because she feels like she’s free falling. “More than...down to fuck.”

Louis’s breath juts out of her, hot and thick on Harry’s lips. She lowers her face, and Harry’s lips form into a kiss, but Louis shifts slightly, her nose brushing against Harry’s cheek. “Fuck, I’ve…,” Harry breathes in deeply, trying to smell what Louis’s about to say the same way you can smell the rain before it falls. “I’ve wanted to do this since the moment you told me your high school had yoga classes instead of sports teams.”

With her eyes closed, Harry can taste the kiss before it drops, so she tilts and lifts and presses her lips to Louis’s, which tremble and then melt into her breath.

Harry stumbles to her lecture, her pelvic bone aching when her thighs brush together. She’s leaking lube in her underwear, so much so that it feels like it must be visibly soaking through the denim of her overalls. Her hair has twice the volume it had before becoming intimate with the amount of friction created by a Muppets duvet, and she thinks her smile is probably communicating to the world just how ecstatic she is that she can still smell the sticky, tangy flavor of Louis all over her face when she inhales.

In the giant lecture hall, two hundred students are typing notes on their laptops while Harry replays moments from the last two hours in her head on repeat. Louis running around her room, hopping on one foot as she tries to put on sweatpants and socks when she realizes that she’s late for her Shakespeare class. Louis pausing with her silicone cock shoved deep inside Harry, looking down at her like Wiley Coyote when he’s only just realized that he’s run off a cliff and is about to fall, gasping like she _loves Harry_. Louis whining pitifully as she struggles to pull Harry’s overalls off before unfastening them.

There are other things, too, that keep flashing into Harry’s mind and making her blush. The white of her own thigh where Louis’s hands dug in deep, holding her hips split open in order to fuck her just where she needed it, just fast enough, a better rhythm and depth than anything she’d had. The _snick snick_ sound of Louis’s hand circling wet and fast on herself while Harry rode her tongue. The blazing, burning heat of her when Harry fit her open mouth over where Louis was open and shining. The way Louis’s body looked naked, slighter than Harry expected. The way Harry’s body spilled out bigger than it looked in the confines of a softball uniform, the way Louis watched her unravel like she was spun gold. The hitch in Harry’s breath when their bodies notched together just right for a cuddle that felt more like a kiss, her breasts tucked just underneath Louis’s. The flutter of Louis’s dark eyelashes when Harry kissed her just right.

In the glow of her blank Word document, Harry opens her phone and tries to think of something to text Louis that’s slightly less pathetic than, “I’m in class, and all I can think about is you.” Maybe something at least a little raunchy, in case Louis isn’t a sap like Harry.

The answer comes to her like a bolt of lightning. Her cheek muscles burn from smiling so hard as she types out, “ _All four bases…does that count as a home run?_ ”

She forces herself not to giggle, bites down hard on her lower lip and swallows painfully to manage it. She’s hilarious and also giddy.

As she waits for a reply, her joke starts to fizzle in her stomach, something about it unsettling her like too much carbonation.

After a solitary hiccup, she realizes it’s because it’s a dig on straight person culture. And the last time she made fun of straight people, it was with her best friend— _at_ her best friend. Her best friend, who isn’t straight. Her best friend, who has been completely avoiding her for two whole days.

Harry closes her laptop and shoves all her belongings into her bag. She stands up too quickly and can’t help a woozy little smile as she feels more fluid trickle out of her. She finds her bearings in her regret and hobbles out of the lecture hall while two hundred students watch.

She suspects that Zayn will be in their room right now because Zayn memorized Harry’s schedule before the quarter even began, needing to make sure that she set aside quiet, private time with the room to herself.

Harry runs down the hall of their floor and pushes the dorm-room door open so hard that it bangs against the wall. Zayn jolts into a halfway-seated position, her eyes wide and black as she stares at Harry like she’s not entirely sure yet that Harry isn’t a monster come to prey on her. One of her ear buds has fallen out, and Harry recognizes the low, male voice of Zayn’s favorite meditation guide. He’s telling them to look back at the tiny speck of the Milky Way from the point of view of another galaxy.

Finally, Zayn relaxes, lies on her back, and puts her other ear bud back in without saying a word to Harry.

But nobody can stop Harry from trying to redeem herself. She drops her shit at the door and jumps onto Zayn’s bed, smiling as Zayn’s light body flops around on the jostled mattress like it’s a trampoline. She can see the tucked corners of Zayn’s mouth where she’s trying not to smile.

Harry wraps her fingers around the cord of Zayn’s headphones and tugs them dramatically from Zayn’s ears. “Zay-ee-nuh.”

“You smell like vagina,” Zayn comments without opening her eyes.

Harry tucks her pungent face into Zayn’s flat chest, shoves the Macbook off her stomach, and drapes herself over Zayn like an oversized cat. “Zay-ee-nuh,” she repeats, banking on her knowledge that Zayn is always weak for a good cuddle. She also loves when Harry apologizes for her mistakes. “I’m sorry I was being biphobic.”

Zayn scoffs and then swats Harry’s thigh with an open palm. Harry rides the swell of Zayn’s full, heavy sigh, listening to the steady beat of her heart.

“I forgive you,” Zayn says, like it’s a mildly interesting anecdote about her day.

“You were right about everything.”

“Is that why you smell like vagina?”

“Yes...but.”

“But?”

“But you’re also right about other stuff. Like…”

And Harry finally finds the words to describe how it makes her uncomfortable when Zayn’s boyfriend sleeps in their room, how it’s really because Harry doesn’t like being around men, especially not when she’s vulnerable and asleep. It has nothing to do with him as a person, and it has nothing to do with Zayn’s sexuality, but it’s easier for her to blame her discomfort on those things than to talk to Zayn about the logistics of room sharing. It’s easier than being honest about how monopolizing Zayn’s time is the only thing that combats her homesickness.

They talk, voices quiet and serious, with only a few swats to Harry’s ass, until the meditation video goes silent. They eventually work out a system, one where they’ll communicate about who will be in the room, one full of compromises to make sure that everyone gets their sleep and sex and personal space needs met.

The conversation goes so well that Harry decides she actually enjoys mature communication. She stays in her spot as Zayn goes back to her meditation videos, thinking about Louis. After a few minutes, she fishes her phone out of her pocket, and Louis hasn’t responded yet, but that doesn’t stop her.

“ _Thank you for being so sweet and professional, looking out for my well-being and trying not to take advantage…even though you could have ordered me to lick your cleats, and I would have come in my pants.”_

Altogether, it’s _mostly_ mature communication.

The vibration of her phone wakes her from a doze.

“ _I really care about you. And I would never do that, that’s gross.”_

and

“ _Knocked it outta the park :P”_

“We’re not gonna make the championships,” Louis groans, her head falling back against the metal locker with a dramatic _thud_.

“It’s not Clover ’til the fat lady sings,” Harry argues. She’s been gradually, subtly training her girlfriend to speak her cow-pun language.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Louis doesn’t look comforted. Probably because she isn’t quite fluent yet.

Harry sidles up beside her, sliding her fingers into the decorative belt loops of Louis’s uniform pants. “Like, don’t give up before the game has even started...don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”

Louis covers her face with both hands, but Harry can tell that she’s at least partly hiding her charmed smile. “I don’t think those are interchangeable expressions.”

Harry nudges closer and puts her mouth against Louis’s ear because a couple of the girls are still getting dressed nearby. “You don’t have to win a championship to get a lot of pussy.”

Warily, Louis drags her hands down her face and looks at Harry out of the corner of her eye. Apparently, Harry looks like someone who can be trusted not to drop to her knees at the slightest provocation, but Louis has good reason to suspect her of that.

Harry smiles, trying to be sweet and supportive. It’s a key game for the team; if they don’t win this one, they have no chance of making it, and Louis has been nervous since they woke up this morning. “At least if you lose, you don’t have to go to Shawn’s house in Canada for Christmas.”

“No,” Louis agrees, fondly turning to Harry and bringing a finger up to twirl around the split ends of a curl.

“Besides, at least you have a chance of winning! Even if I get 100% on my final tomorrow, I still won’t get a high enough grade for the department.”

Louis’s smile takes on an apologetic twist. “What are you going to do?” she asks, tenderly. Harry loves how soft she gets when she’s talking to Harry.

Harry doesn’t know the answer, so she shrugs and drops her head onto the top of Louis’s. She still feels achey and lost when she thinks about the prospect of not being allowed to become a large-animal veterinarian, but at least she has a plan: retake one of her science classes next quarter and see if it goes better when she’s only focusing on one. She got an easy A in her writing class, so she’s going to take some humanities classes on the side, just to see how _that_ goes. Still, having a plan doesn’t mean that she has confidence in her choices.

“Let’s just say I’ll still get a lot of pussy,” she grins smugly against the strands of Louis’s taut, barely-there ponytail.

“Oh, will you?”

Harry drops her hand to the crotch of Louis’s track pants and curves her hand against the hot mound that’s always waiting for her. She presses her fingers up, snickering victoriously as Louis trembles, so easy for her, even in a locker room full of her teammates.

Someone catcalls, and someone who’s probably Niall sharply slaps Harry’s guilty forearm while walking by. Harry retreats, and Louis coyly turns her head until Harry has to give up the perch of her chin and look down into those clear blue eyes that make her feel seen and beautiful and funny and loved.

“Well,” Louis sighs, gaze flickering down to Harry’s mouth. “What Heifer makes you happy.”

Harry doesn’t stop kissing her until the empty metal cage of the locker room echoes with a shrill female voice finishing the last bands of the national anthem.

**Author's Note:**

> I highly recommend scrolling through the entire [ Clover Stornetta Gallery for fun!](https://cloversonoma.com/gallery/)


End file.
